Tag: David Lynch

This was pure pleasure. If the show’s original run taught us anything, it was to enjoy the mystery, because if you’re just enduring a show for eighteen hours waiting for clever answers at the end, you’ll be deservedly disappointed. The blu-ray has already been announced, so I’m saving the thinkpieces and episode recaps and conspiracy theories for after a second viewing.

“It is in our house now.” The Tall Man appears in the first scene, and almost everyone from seasons one and two and Fire Walk, whether characters or actors are alive or dead or refused to appear in the show, will be present in some way or another. And I really need screen shots with updates for each character and situation. Lynch merges the casts of Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me with Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, brings in new mood music and his own paintings as visual design, forming an Expanded Lynchian Universe. Each episode is dedicated to a different departed actor (or character) which combines with the resurrections (Don Davis, David Bowie) and final testaments (Catherine Coulson, Miguel Ferrer) of its cast, and the limbo/afterlife storylines of the Black Lodge and Laura Palmer, the aged actors and out-of-time (“what year is this?”) feel of this belated sequel give the whole thing a sense of death and mystery beyond the storyline alone.

The Mitchum Brothers (Jim Belushi, and Robert Knepper of Carnivale) run a casino insured by Dougie’s firm, assisted by comic-relief Candie (Amy Shiels, Luna in the Final Fantasy games). Dougie’s boss is the very patient Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray, Marilyn Monroe’s costar in Bus Stop), and his coworker/rival is sweaty Tom Sizemore, who is working as a spy for Mulholland Drive‘s Dinerbrows (Patrick Fischler) trying to frame Dougie.

New FBI agent Chrysta Bell works with Gordon Cole and Albert, along with the previously unseen Diane (Laura Dern in a wig), on the case of Bill (Matthew Lillard) who appears to have killed a woman he was having an affair with, or possibly her body was replaced with that of the late Major Briggs by interdimensional gas-station-dwelling black-faced woodsmen.

Young, serious Sam (Ben Rosenfield of Person to Person) and his girl Tracey (Madeline Zima of Californication) are paid to watch and videotape an interdimensional box, but instead they have sex, and in classic horror movie tradition, get brutally murdered for it.

Londoner Freddie (Jake Wardle) got turned into One Punch Man by The Giant (aka The Fireman), now works as a security guard with James Hurley, who still sings his hit song “Just You & I” at the Bang Bang Bar some nights. Fate brings Freddie to Twin Peaks to destroy Bob, which emerges from Evil Coop as an orb.

Some series regulars:

Andy and Lucy (now with son Wally Brando: Michael Cera) still work at the Twin Peaks sheriff’s office with Hawk, and now with Truman’s brother Robert Forster (with naggy wife Candy Clark of American Graffiti), Deputy Bobby Briggs, and traitor Deputy Chad (John Pirruccello of an upcoming hit-man comedy)

Log Lady Margaret speaks with Hawk on the phone from her death bed, feeding him cryptic clues. One-armed Mike appears to Coop-as-Dougie, feeding him pretty straightforward clues.

Nadine runs a silent drape shop, religiously watches the pirate TV broadcasts of Dr. Jacoby, who sells gold spray-painted shovels. Norma is franchising the diner with help of her guy Walter (Grant Goodeve of Eight is Enough, Northern Exposure), while Big Ed still pines for her.

Amanda Seyfried (daughter of Shelly) is dating psycho cokehead Caleb Landry Jones (son of Audrey Horne), who runs over a kid then tries to murder a witness living in Harry Dean Stanton’s trailer park.

Walter Olkewicz, who played the late Jacques Renault, runs the Bang Bang Bar as an identical Renault relative.

Jerry Horne is looking more like Jerry Garcia, gets lost in the woods, fights with his own foot, is finally discovered naked in Wyoming.

Bobby Briggs is a level-headed, good-hearted policeman, and the best surprise of the new series.

Laura Palmer’s mom doesn’t do well in social situations, freaks out at the convenience store, watches TV on a time-loop, her house a screaming dim red hell.

I never figured out who Judy is, where Audrey Horne was or where she ends up, who Balthazar Getty played, or various other threads which a second viewing will probably not enlighten.

Plus cameos by Ray Wise, David Duchovny, Jack Nance, and almost everyone else, living or dead (except Harry Truman and Donna) and some fifteen music acts, Ethan Suplee, John Ennis, Ernie Hudson, etc.

Other things:

an eyeless woman with a connection to Diane… Diane is Naomi Watts’s half-sister… the picture glitching back and forth like a Martin Arnold film… an obsession with numbers… digital spaces like Chris Marker videos, and effects completely unconcerned with looking realistic… the green ring from Fire Walk With Me… Lucy doesn’t understand cellphones… the best closing songs at the Bang Bang Bar… “hellllOOOooooOOOooo”… a short stabby hit man with his own theme music… a kung-fu drug dealer who does intense magic tricks… inside a 1945 atomic bomb… alien vomit… flickering lights and a giant tesla diving bell… a galaxy of firefly ghosts… beetle-moth-frog crawls out of a desert egg… “this is the water and this is the well”… references to “The Zone”… teens at the Bang Bang Bar with random teen problems and other scraps of side-character drama… Ashley Judd searches for a the source of a droning sound in Ben Horne’s lodge… a history of the FBI’s involvement with UFOs… Dougie electrocutes himself… Evil Coop gets taken out in the best possible way… the final Lynch/Frost logo noise scares the hell out of my birds… “We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream.”

Rewatching this series for obvious reasons, after recently reviewing the prequel film. I remember season two becoming tedious, so I’m only watching the late episodes directed by Lynch and/or written by Frost, which will leave some major plot holes I can cover with synopses from wikipedia or wherever. So many characters to keep track of, and so many actors I haven’t seen since the show ended in 1991, and some I have.

Agent Dale Cooper – loves Tibet, doughnuts, clean air and good coffee. I’ve seen Kyle MacLachlan in Northfork, Portlandia, and that version of Kafka’s The Trial which I don’t remember at all but IMDB says I gave it a 7/10.

Lucy is the police receptionist who has feelings for Andy. Kimmy Robertson did voices in some Disney movies and The Tick.

Deputy Andy is dumb as hell. Harry Goaz worked with director David Lowery before his Ain’t Them Bodies Saints breakout.

Sheriff Harry Truman is a good lawman, secretly (everything in the show is “secretly”) dating Josie Packard. Michael Ontkean costarred in a Disney movie with four monkeys and Wilford Brimley, and was apparently in The Descendants.

Deputy Hawk is a good, quiet cop. Michael Horse was in Passenger 57 and a movie directed by John Travolta’s older brother.

Agent Albert Rosenfield works with Cooper, expresses contempt for the locals. Miguel Ferrer died the week I started season two, also starred in On The Air.

James Hurley is sweet but so dumb, per an audiotape of Laura’s. He runs around with Donna playing detective. James Marshall was one of the murderous privates on trial in A Few Good Men.

Maddy is Laura’s identical twin cousin, who appears in the show immediately after the show-within-the-show (soap opera Invitation to Love) introduces its own identical-twin plot. Sheryl Lee played twins again in the great Mother Night, also costarred in the unfortunate John Carpenter’s Vampires.

Donna Hayward is Laura’s innocent friend who ends up with James after Laura’s death. Lara Flynn Boyle was Ally Sheedy’s predecessor in Happiness, also starred in Threesome and the show The Practice.

Leland Palmer, Laura’s dad and killer and the town lawyer… is complicated. Ray Wise is incredible and prolific but I’ve seen him in too few things (Good Night and Good Luck, Bob Roberts).

Will Hayward is the town doctor who ends up discussing dead and comatose bodies with Agent Cooper. He’s Donna’s dad of course, with a wife in a wheelchair and at least one other daughter. Warren Frost, Mark’s dad, did some Matlock, died just last week.

Ben Horne runs the town’s hotel, department store, and a brothel called One Eyed Jack’s over the Canadian border, is always trying to do business deals with rowdy groups of foreigners who get frightened off by murderous town rumors. Richard Beymer was in Angelina Jolie movie Foxfire, earlier Bachelor Flat and West Side Story.

Jerry Horne is Ben’s excitable little brother who loves exotic food, business deals and the local brothel. David Patrick Kelly was the military guy who Lysistrata ties up in Chi-Raq, also in the John Wick movies and played the president in Flags of Our Fathers.

Dr. Jacoby was Laura’s wacky psychiatrist and had an unhealthy romantic interest in her. I don’t think we see any other locals going to his office except Bobby one time, so he’s got enough free time to chase ghosts. Russ Tamblyn, Ben Horne’s best friend in West Side Story, had roles in Drive, Django Unchained and Cabin Boy, and played a “Dr. Jacoby” on General Hospital.

Audrey Horne is Ben’s daughter who has to avoid a horrifying meeting with him at One Eyed Jack’s while she’s retracing Laura’s steps. Sherilyn Fenn starred in Boxing Helena, which I have yet to find a decent copy of.

Major Briggs doesn’t know how to deal with his wayward son Bobby, leaks mysterious military intel to Cooper. “The owls are not what they seem.” Don Davis was a regular on the Stargate TV series, which ran for more seasons that I realized.

Bobby Briggs is excitable boyfriend of Laura Palmer and Shelly, sullen son of Major Briggs, rival of James Hurley, drug dealer friend of Mike (“Mike and Bobby” mirroring the evil Black Lodge “Mike and Bob”) and associate of Leo and Jacques. Dana Ashbrook was in the L.A. Crash TV series and the latest Bill Plympton feature.

Leo Johnson is a drug dealer, spouse abuser and murderer, is in a coma at the start of s2. Eric DaRe appeared with good company (Brad Dourif, Angela Bassett) in Critters 4.

Big Ed Hurley, James’s dad, married to Nadine but thinking about leaving her for Norma. Runs a gas station. Everett McGill was the villain(?) in The People Under The Stairs and appeared in The Straight Story.

Nadine Hurley, James’s mom though we never see them interact, wears an eyepatch and is obsessed with creating silent drape runners. Later she gets amnesia and super strength and falls for Bobby’s friend Mike. Wendy Robie was in Corbin Bernsen horror The Dentist 2.

Shelly Johnson is Leo’s abused wife, working at the diner, dating Bobby and conspiring to frame her husband for Laura Palmer’s death. Lynch’s character, Cooper’s boss, is sweet on her in season two. Mädchen Amick has been on every TV show at least once, plus the terrible Stephen King movie Sleepwalkers.

Josie Packard runs the sawmill, has a suspicious past, and I think was supposed to be a bigger deal but got left behind by the writers. Joan Chen was a movie star from The Last Emperor but wouldn’t fare as well in Hollywood, appearing in garbage action flicks Wedlock, On Deadly Ground and Judge Dredd.

Peter Martell helps Josie run the mill, isn’t as dumb as he looks. Jack Nance’s final film was Lost Highway.

Catherine Martell is married to Pete, resents Josie for owning the mill, which used to belong to Catherine’s brother/Josie’s late husband Andrew, who of course turns out not to be dead. Piper Laurie played Carrie‘s crazy mom, later in The Crossing Guard and The Dead Girl.

Norma Jennings is dating Big Ed, runs the diner, unhappily married to Hank. Peggy Lipton is Rashida Jones’s mom, appeared in modern classic The Postman.

Hank Jennings is a criminal in cahoots with Leo and Jacques. He thinks he killed Josie’s husband, gets out of prison halfway through s1. Chris Mulkey acts in a ton of movies, recently Whiplash and Cloverfield.

Margaret has a log that sometimes sees things. Catherine Coulson starred in early Lynch short The Amputee, died before the reboot filmed but not before appearing as “Wood Woman” in a Psych episode.

Julee Cruise, house musician at the Roadhouse. I have her album The Voice of Love, produced by Lynch and Badalamenti.

The Giant appears to Cooper in dreams and visions, dropping cryptic clues. Carel Struycken played Lurch in the Addams Family movies and appeared in Men In Black.

The Waiter might be an alternate form of The Giant. Only Cooper can see the two of them. Hank Worden did nothing after Twin Peaks but plenty beforehand as a Westerns regular (marshall in Forty Guns, drunk in The Big Sky).

The Man From Another Place is maybe Bob’s boss or partner, speaks in reverse, is somehow connected to One-Armed Mike. Michael J. Anderson played a similarly mysterious fellow in a curtained room in Mulholland Dr., was a regular on Carvivàle.

–
Season two, Cooper recovers from a gunshot wound. I think Josie ended up being the shooter, but skipped enough episodes that I’m not sure why.

“You’d better bring Agent Cooper up to date.”
“Leo Johnson was shot. Jacques Renault was strangled. The mill burned. Shelley and Pete got smoke inhalation. Catherine and Josie are missing. Nadine is in a coma from taking sleeping pills.”

A bunch of new characters show up… I missed most of their intros, but got to see a few of them die. Sadly I missed cross-dressing David Duchovny completely, and I saw Billy Zane but don’t remember what his deal is.

Annie is Norma’s younger sister, starts dating Cooper then gets kidnapped by Earle. Coop’s searching for Annie when he ends up in the Black Lodge. I haven’t seen Heather Graham lately but it seems she was everywhere in the late 1990’s: Swingers, Austin Powers, Scream, etc., and most notably Boogie Nights.

Dick Tremayne was Lucy’s classy lover while on break from Andy. When she gets pregnant and isn’t sure which is the father, Dick and Andy get competitive. Ian Buchanan starred in On The Air and did a million soap opera episodes.

Windom Earle is Agent Cooper’s rival, who gets tangled up in the crimes and horrors before having his soul sucked out by Bob in the final episode. Kenneth Welsh, seen here about to murder Ted Raimi, seems to be tenth-billed in bunches of horror/action movies.

Andrew Packard returns from the “dead” in season two only to be blown up in the finale, along with poor Pete and probably Audrey who was chained to the vault door at the time. Dan O’Herlihy, Bunuel’s Robinson Crusoe, was also in The Dead, Fail-Safe, Imitation of Life and Odd Man Out.

–
I was surprised that nothing supernatural happens until the end of episode 3, four hours into the series. Really a top-notch melodrama with excellent casting, at least for a while. Here’s hoping the reboot is great.

Rewatched this in less-than-optimal conditions (not on my fucking telephone, at least), but I’ve seen it so many times already. It’s hard to watch without the fan theories I read online in 2002 popping into my head… can’t let the mystery of it all wash over me when my mind keeps fitting the pieces into a puzzle. Granted, the theories work pretty well. And each scene is fantastic whether it makes narrative sense or not.

Classic Hollywood: landlady Coco is Ann Miller of Kiss Me Kate and On The Town, and the ranting woman wandering the apartment halls is Lee Grant of Detective Story and Shampoo. Betty’s new friend at the airport is Mary’s mom in Eraserhead. Since this came out I’ve seen Naomi Watts in a few things (none of them very good except Eastern Promises), Laura Harring in nothing, and Justin Theroux in Wanderlust and Charlie’s Angels 2. Most upsetting is when Patrick Fischler, the scared guy in the diner, shows up in a movie or TV show, as he does more regularly than his Mulholland costars.

Learned from the interview extras: Lynch says the title Mulholland Dr. was originally for a cancelled Twin Peaks spinoff, and The Cowboy is wearing Tom Mix’s original clothes.

I have mixed feelings about this one. Felt like Lynch already reclaimed Twin Peaks for himself in the final episode of the series. Sheryl Lee is great, and it’s a good movie about her increasingly troubled youth, dodging her upright boyfriend James to hang out with drug-supplying Bobby (who kills a guy in the woods), and grappling with her realization that her tormentor “Bob” is actually her father. Lynch’s heart may have been on poor Laura’s side, wanting to spend time with her while she was alive, but it comes off as a redundant prequel, full of fan-servicing cameos by the show’s cast and decisions based more on actor availability than artistic concerns.

Lynch practically writes Agent Cooper out of the show, replacing him with Chris Isaak (and wonderful sidekick Kiefer Sutherland) in a long opening segment about the disappearance of Laura’s associate Teresa Banks and her mysterious ring, but he can’t write out Laura’s best friend Donna. Lara Flynn Boyle was a superstar in 1992, appearing in Wayne’s World and Matthew Modine identical-twin thriller Equinox, so Moira Kelly (With Honors, The Cutting Edge) is the new Donna. The whole Horne family is missing too (Sherilyn Fenn was costarring with Danny Aiello in a movie about the JFK assassination from Jack Ruby’s point of view) though they’re mentioned in the deleted scenes.

Peaceful domestic scene:

Rewatched this the night Bowie died. He has a tiny role in the movie, but fits into Lynch’s netherworld perfectly. I forget some of the Twin Peaks mythology (planning to rewatch some episodes before the new one comes out), but I’m into this brigade Lynch was building of dimension-hopping special agents: Kyle, Bowie and Isaak. Re-reading a Cinema Scope article from when the deleted scenes came out, there are plenty of interesting connections to the series that I missed from not having watched it in 14 years.

Who can identify all the people in Whatever Lodge This Is? There’s Bob and MJ Anderson up front, then we’ve got papier-mache-face, cane fella, old woman, suit kid, and the fake beard brothers. According to a Twin Peaks-dedicated wiki, the old woman is Mrs. Tremond and “her intentions are unclear”.

Thanks, Wikipedia… so the red-curtained, zigzag-floored place is The Black Lodge, and that’s one-armed Mike sitting with MJ Anderson (who refers to himself as “the arm” in the film) facing Bob and Leland.

Demy’s segment on lechery from The Seven Capital Sins anthology. Nice long takes, light musical feel, made right after Lola. Unshaven Jean-Louis Trintignant (My Night at Maud’s) tells his relentless ladies-man buddy Laurent Terzieff (La Prisonnière) about his early misunderstandings of the word lechery, feat. flashbacks and hell-sequences. Jean Desailly (The Soft Skin) and Micheline Presle (The Nun, A Lady Without Camelias) play flashback-Trintingnant’s parents. Quite a bit of rhyming and wordplay that’s probably not coming through in the subtitles.

Terzieff:

Puppy Love (2003, Michael Colton)

Watched some clips from the Illegal Art comp, similar to the shorts that Craig Baldwin showed in Atlanta. In this one, a dog is in love with a pikachu.

Black Thunder (2001, Brian Spinks, Bill Wasik & Eugene Mirman)

Short series of campaign ads for animals running for office.
I’m voting for the bear.

Incident by a Bank (2009, Ruben Ostlund)

Single take recreation of a comically failed bank robbery.

O Velho do Restelo (2014, Manoel de Oliveira)

Actors playing Don Quixote, author Camilo Castelo Branco and two others discuss Portuguese culture, with flashbacks to Oliveira films such as Doomed Love and Non.

Stardust (2013, Mischa Rozema)

Some beautiful celestial effects.

Haiku (2009, Frederick Wiseman)

Lion / Waiting / Legs

Haiku (2009, Naomi Kawase)

Cicada / Sunrise / Flower

Haiku (2009, Alain Cavalier)

Train / Poster of bearded man / Bearded Man
Nicely done, in one take.

Idem Paris (2013, David Lynch)

While art prints of a Lynch painting are being pressed, Lynch stalks the press, enamored with the clanking gears and spinning wheels.

Emily Prime is contacted by her third-generation clone, discussing memory, robots, love and life in the outernet of the future.

Only 16 minutes long but I watched it seven times.

Choose You (2013, Spike Jonze & Chris Milk)

Written by Lena Dunham and directed by Spike Jonze – and yet it’s terrible? I think that’s because it’s a corporate-sponsored short made for a music video awards show. Anyway, subtitled and censored, club dude’s ex-gf is now dating DJ Michael Shannon, some girl he doesn’t even know freaks out about this, then Jason Schwartzmann hosts a choose-your-own-adventure ending and double suicide is chosen.

The Discontented Canary (1934, Rudolf Ising)

A sad caged canary gets his chance to escape, but nature beats the hell out of him, so he returns home, learning to appreciate his captivity. At least he wasn’t hit by lightning like the feral cat. Moral: life is just horrible.

Didn’t realize this was a WWI propaganda film. “Germany, once a great and powerful nation, had done a dastardly deed in a dastardly way.”

Intro explaining how difficult the movie was to create, and plenty of title cards, so the nine minute short has maybe four minutes of animation. But the animation is real good stuff, all water and smoke.

We Give Pink Stamps (1965, Friz Freleng)

Absurd fun in a department store as the Pink Panther torments the night janitor.

Closed Mondays (1974, Will Vinton & Bob Gardiner)

Great claymation. Wino wanders into an art gallery, hallucinates (?) all the paintings and sculptures coming to life.

Night Mail (1936 Wright & Watt)

I’ve heard this is one of the greatest short documentaries. True, it’s admirably put together, showing all the moving parts in a great, manned machine that moves the mail across England and Scotland really damn fast. And it makes you marvel at the heights of human endeavor. And it ends with a post office rap song. So yeah I was gonna say it’s just a doc about a mail train, but I guess I see their point.

Monster (2005 Jennifer Kent)

Beginnings of The Babadook (there’s a pop-up book and everything). Monster-doll grows into full monster and attacks son, mom screams at it, tells it to go to its room.

Fears (2015, Nata Metlukh)

Terrific 2-minute animated short linked by Primal.
A man literally embraces his fears.

Restaurant Dogs (1994, Eli Roth)

Student film in which an evil brigade of fast-food restaurant mascots is bloodily defeated by a young dude who’s given a mission from the Burger King himself to save his daughter the Dairy Queen. Something like that, anyway. I thought the guy only wanted to buy a milkshake, and suspected he was drunk, so I’m surprised he signed up for the murderous mission so quickly.

Given all the trademarked properties being mixed with nazi images via Terry Gilliam-style cut-out animation, I thought I’d better watch this as soon as I heard about it, rather than wait until our corporate overlords remove it from the internet like they did the Soderbergh cut of 2001: A Space Odyssey which I’d been meaning to watch. Besides Reservoir Dogs, there’s some Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now in the grimace/hamburglar flashback scene.

Ritual (1979, Joseph Bernard)

Under three minutes, viewed online as a trailer for the new Bernard blu-ray, which I obviously need. Drawings, figures, people and scenes and stuttering colors cut together into changing rhythms and overlays. My favorite bit has an overlay of two scenes, one of which is cutting, an effect I don’t see often.

David Lynch’s mysterious contribution to the Lumiere and Co. anthology, now in high-def. I think police discover a dead body and inform the family, and in between there’s a weird alien lab with a brilliant burning-paper scene transition.

Festi (2014, Arcade Fire)

Someone is possessed by the ghost of Jim Morrison, who wants to murder Will Butler and Richard Parry, presumably for releasing solo albums. He chases them with a knife saying “these guys won a fucking grammy?” Richard dies running into an electric fence. Terry Gilliam cameos. This is a celeb goofoff with pretty bad camerawork.

Haha, creepy National twins:

Alone (2014, Jeremiah Kipp)

This is a nice eye-cleanser after the sub-amateur cinematography of the Arcade Fire piece.
Adam Ginsberg reads a Poe poem with gorgeous cutaways.

The Minions (2014, Jeremiah Kipp)

“You walked down the witches’ path, didn’t you?”

William helps pick up incredibly drunk girl on the sidewalk and get her home. But drunk girl acts very attracted to poor William, and reminds him of voiceover witch who is presenting him with moral dilemma. I don’t think this is out yet, so will say no more, besides that Kipp seems prolific, puts out consistently high-quality work, and is the only person who emails me to preview his movies and I’ll say yes.

Berenice (2014, Jeremiah Kipp)

I’ve just watched the Rohmer version – this one is set in modern day, so dialogue has been rewritten, and has a 100% more horrifying ending (she wakes up entombed, blood-spattered, her teeth having been removed by her bonkers fiancee). Hmmm both of the last two shorts ended up featuring regular guys who end up being creeps helping to carry passed-out women. Found this on IMDB under the anthology Creepers.

L’etrange Portrait de le Dame en Jaune (2004 Cattet & Forzani)

After Amer and Strange Color I’m out of Cattet & Forzani features, so catching up on the shorts. Of course it’s about a woman’s murder by a black-gloved stranger, but this time no fancy editing since it’s a single take shot through a mirror, which breaks at the end, so at least there’s a semblance of the directors’ favorite split-screen effect

Santos Palace (2006 Cattet & Forzani)

Watched in unsubtitled French and Spanish. Almost-affair-and/or-murder between barista and customer is interrupted. As usual, delectable editing and audio.

Chambre Jaune (2002 Cattet & Forzani)

Most of this is in such extreme slow-motion that it looks like Dog’s Dialogue-style stills. Music box song… black gloved hand holds a razor… somewhat storyless sex/murder/fetish flick. They love keyholes and the creaking sound of leather.

Catharsis (2001 Cattet & Forzani)

Their most explicitly gruesome movie. A La Jetee low-frame-rate loop-film. A man arrives naked in a room, is killed and chopped to bits by gloved stabber played by the same man, who then arrives naked in the room, etc.

La Fin de Notre Amour (2004 Cattet & Forzani)

Guess I saved the most disturbed one for last. Entirely told in still images, man seems like a more artistic Frank from Hellraiser, very into razors and masochism, then leather-clad woman shows up and they destroy each other in creative new ways.

I ran out of screen shots – may have used the wrong one for the wrong movie…

It’s not a short (an hour long), but I have little to say about it, so this is a short entry. The movie’s probably of more interest to fans of Yves Montand’s singing career than of Marker’s filmmaking or their shared politics. Marker focuses on Montand’s rehearsals for an upcoming concert benefitting Chilean refugees and he cuts to clips from the concert itself, and clips from Montand’s political films (Z, The Confession, The War Is Over).

Shot by the IMDB-credited Pierre Lhomme (Mr. Freedom, Army of Shadows) as well as Jacques Renard (Celine & Julie Go Boating) and Yann Le Masson. A nicely put-together little movie, but more like your standard fly-on-wall doc mixed with a celebrity personality piece than Marker’s usual style. Montand is passionate about the details, but it’s not my kind of music so I’m not sure what he’s going for. M. Legrand was involved somehow.

Some dude on the sidelines sports a Flo & Eddie shirt:

Lady Blue Shanghai (2010, David Lynch)

Plays like a total Inland Empire outtake (or Darkened Room 2). A confused Marion Cotillard calls security on an expensive handbag (the short was commissioned as a handbag advertisement) found in her room. She grabs it and half-remembers some alternate-existence romantic rooftop chase scene, featuring herself, an attractive man from Shanghai, and an expensive handbag.

My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 (2002, Chris Morris)

An unstable Paddy Considine is left in charge of the dog, but can’t manage it. Dog dies, Paddy ends up at the pond screaming at ducks. Nice Warp-sounding music from the director. I enjoyed it.

Mermaid (1964, Osamu Tezuka)

Katy likes when I show her movies I haven’t already watched, then criticizes this one for being depressing and My Wrongs for being unfunny. None of Tezuka’s shorts have been sad before (well, Male has a murder scene), so how was I to know? A re-run of Haanstra’s Glas was better-received. This one’s a 1984/freedom-of-thought parable about a boy who catches a fish and imagines its a mermaid, until the thought police imprison him and try to brainwash away his imagination so he’ll see the fish as a fish. Naturally it ends with the boy freeing his fish and either becoming a merman or drowning himself.

The Uneasy Three (1925, Leo McCarey)

A Hal Roach short starring Charley Chase as a wannabe thief who, with his girl and her brother, pretends to be a musical trio to gain entry to a high-society party and steal a valuable brooch. That’s such a generic-sounding description that now I can’t recall if I wrote it or I copy/pasted it from somewhere. Anyway, they successfully fake being musician/entertainers and frame the real musicians for the crime.

Bull Montana, harpist:

Winston Tong en studio (1984, Olivier Assayas)

A studio recording of a silly-sounding song. I missed the vocalist’s interview in French, but enjoyed Jah Wobble’s rant against commercialism. Also liked the filmmakers’ sound mix, keeping bits of the last take in the mix over the interview, dialing up and down the backing music while Tong is singing. Besides Assayas it’s got Nicolas Klotz (La Blessure, La Question Humaine) editing.

Hokusai: An Animated Sketchbook (1978, Tony White)

Tony, an assistant on Richard Williams’ A Christmas Carol brings acclaimed Japanese woodcut artist Hokusai’s drawings wonderfully to life for a five-minute short. Not having any previous Hokusai exposure myself, I can’t tell which drawings are his and which are interpreted by White. Teshigahara had also made a short doc on Hokusai, and a few years after this Kaneto Shindo would make a feature with the great English-language title Edo Porn.

Endangered Species (2006, Tony White)

I found Tony’s other short on YouTube – a eulogy for the lost art of hand-drawn animation, made in collaboration with Roy Disney. So ol’ Walt is championed at the expense of his competitors at Warner Bros. Also parodied: Roger Rabbit, Fritz the Cat, Beavis & Butthead, artistic diversity, and corporations that would cruelly try to control independent animators and diminish their freedom. Seems weird that a pro-Disney film would be against huge companies. Seems to have mixed feelings about Pixar, and tags Hayao Miyazaki as animation’s hope for the future.

“Sometimes I’m really not sure who’s worse: us cops or the fuckin’ criminals,” says a cop (Willem Dafoe) in Werner Herzog’s new movie – which premiered two days after his Bad Lieutenant. I appreciated that little connection, as well as some casting borrowed from producer David Lynch (Dafoe from Wild at Heart, Brad Dourif from Blue Velvet and the ever-creepy Grace Zabriskie from Inland Empire) and Lynchian attention paid to coffee cups. Unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate much else – not the flat camerawork, the easily-predicted hostage twist, nor the go-nowhere story.

Grace has jello:

My two biggest problems with the movie are identified as assets by Herzog on the DVD extras. He says that feature films should be made cheaply and he achieved this by using a lousy DV camera (probably a Lynch hand-me-down), hence the flat grey photography (fortunately Herzog still knows how to frame a nice shot – it’s not just a visual wasteland out there). Then he talks about interviewing the crazy fellow on whom Michael Shannon’s character was based, noting hundreds of loony little details, then making up his own loony details with Shannon to avoid making a boringly specific true story. But it’s all random details. Shannon is always saying crazy shit with no connection anywhere else, and hey, maybe that’s what fellows who call themselves God and murder their parents actually do, but it comes across as trying too hard to be zany.

Chloe starts to worry about her boyfriend:

Framing device: Michael Shannon (last seen being crazy in Bug) has killed his mother with a sword in front of neighbors Irma P. Hall (Coens’ The Ladykillers) and Loretta Devine (Urban Legend). Detective Dafoe and his overeager partner Michael Peña (Shooter) wait outside because Shannon yells that he has two hostages – but he won’t say who, and the only characters missing are his pet flamingos named Macdougal and Mcnamara, so guess who the hostages turn out to be? Until Shannon comes out, Dafoe kills time by interviewing the neighbors, Shannon’s girlfriend Chloe Sevigny, and friend Udo Kier.

Macdougal and Mcnamara are great flamingo names!

Theater director Udo describes the background of the play he cast Michael Shannon in: “a dynasty of ruthless kings and diabolical queens who eat each other’s flesh and fuck each other’s wives – century after century, generation after generation – and only Orestus can lift that curse, but he has to murder his mother to do it.” This is the part that was based on a true story. He also reminisces about Shannon taking him to uncle Brad Dourif’s ostrich farm (flamingos + ostriches = a good bird movie). Chloe says Mike went to Peru with his buddies a couple years ago and started having premonitions, ditched the raft trip they were all supposed to take and ended up the only survivor. Meanwhile, Shannon in flashback walks around a market in some country or another with a Pi-camera strapped to him and says things like “I hate it that the sun always comes up in the east.”

Michael, Udo, Brad and a sword:

DVD extras tell us the writer used Jules Dassin’s A Dream of Passion for inspiration. I was thinking that “hostages” kinda sounds like “ostriches.”